Cold Calls are Dead. Long Live Inbound Marketing Services!

Inbound Marketing Services vs. Cold Calls

Before there were inbound marketing services, cold calls were the go-to strategy for generating leads. If you’re too young to remember cold calling, consider yourself lucky. It was the act of tirelessly phoning person after person (or company after company) that had the best potential for becoming customers or clients. It’s the telemarketing version of throwing spaghetti against the wall. Sometimes a strand or two will stick. Most of the time, though? Well….

Sound mind-numbing and depressing? Yeah. But other than solid referrals, cold calls were your only option, back in the day. We’re not back in the day, anymore. Now we have inbound marketing services. Yay, 21st-century technology!

How do inbound marketing services work? Streng Agency, a leader in the biz, explains:

Inbound Marketing Services are to Cold Calls as Wifi is to Dial-Up

What’s your time worth? What’s your sales team’s time worth? Does anyone even remotely successful in today’s business climate think for a single second that cold calling is the best investment for generating sales or clientele?

Get real. No one at a managerial level wants to have her ear pressed to a phone, listening to some stranger’s spiel. Oh, and that’s assuming your best salesman gets past the exec’s gatekeeper. And, no doubt, your best guy is fantastic at that. But, is that ancient method the best use of his time?

Someone who thinks so probably also thinks dial-up is a better value than wifi.

Nothing illustrates how maddeningly unwelcome cold calls are quite like that. Even the best producers in a sales team would have to be made of solid granite to sustain such a mental beat-down day in and day out.

Great news, though. It’s 2018. Neither they nor you have to.

Inbound Marketing Services Defined

If you’re not familiar with inbound marketing, you’re not alone. So let’s start with a definition of inbound marketing services before we get into the details of how they work.

Inbound marketing lasers in on relevance and high-value content. Like the Reese’s Pieces that lured ET safely out of hiding, inbound marketing services use customer interests and needs to guide them through each stage of the buying journey. Your potential customers discover you organically via avenues like blogs, search engines, and social media.

When inbound marketing services are done right, the customer tracks down your business instead of the other way round.

Instead of the “spaghetti on the wall” approach of outbound marketing methods like cold calls or commercials, inbound marketing services customize content that addresses your ideal customer’s problems and needs. This means inbound marketing sets things up so your business doesn’t have to scream for customer attention like some internet carnival barker, hoping to be heard over all the noise.

In other words, inbound marketing services allow your potential customer’s complete control when it comes to the buying process. Start to finish, the process sets up a chain of contact that brings customers to your business, rather than you having to track them down.

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

Simple fact: inbound marketing services significantly out-produce old outbound marketing methods like cold calls. How could it be otherwise? With inbound marketing, generating leads is simpler and better targeted. The digital age of marketing, by its very nature, simplifies and tailors leads. That means today’s businesses can hone their messages through inbound marketing services in ways that antiquated, intrusive cold calls just can’t manage. And that produces real results.

We’re not just talking advantages over cold calls, either.

Outbound marketing like old-school print advertising and direct mail can’t compete with inbound marketing sales funneling. By their very nature, inbound marketing services creates more desirable experiences for both the consumer and the company.

Inbound Marketing’s Quality, Better Qualified Leads

Listen, we get it. If outbound methods like cold calls are all you’ve ever known, the thought of switching to inbound marketing services can be intimidating. But, we promise, there’s nothing to fear. Once some of the basics are grasped, there is no doubt your company will never want to go back to the “once was.”

In short order, you’ll see the overall mood in the sales department lift as the anxiety of approaching strangers through cold calls falls away and authentically qualified leads jump in numbers. Confidence is a crucial trait in a successful sales team. Knowing that the prospects they’re reaching out to are interested and meets most (if not all!) of your company’s qualifications is a confidence booster that the old outbound methods like cold calls could never duplicate.

Having to wade through the chaff of unqualified leads eats away time and money.

For every 330 cold calls made, one sales appointment with a potential customer was set.

In total, only 28 percent of all those cold calls were even answered.

Everyone who has ever been stuck in the purgatory of cold calling knows how mind-numbing and pointless it is to pitch prospects that simply do not need the product or service being represented. And, let’s face it, the majority of these uninterested prospects usually aren’t very pleasant when they end the phone call.

Does that sound like a total waste of time to you, in this day and age of digital marketing? Join the club.

The lead quality and increased percentage of sales are precisely why so many savvy business leaders have embraced the advantages of inbound marketing services.

Rather than having a salesperson doing an exhaustive hunt for the slightest trace of a qualified prospect, inbound marketing attracts people that are already on the lookout for a service or product like yours. And it delivers them right to your phone or inbox.

The Broad Spectrum of Inbound Marketing

Even those in know are impressed with the broad specialty reach of inbound marketing services. Inbound marketing is far more than an impressively designed landing page and easy to use “contact us” forms.

Of course, those are essential elements. But inbound marketing is comprised of a suite of digital tactics custom made to engage consumers and eventually entice them to your business’s digital doorstep.

Today’s business environment is overwhelming internet-based.

Let’s use the example of a company that specializes in funding small businesses that need working capital. Prior to the inception of inbound marketing services, the sales force of such a business would be virtually dependent on building up a client list by making hundreds of cold calls on a daily basis.

Sure, referrals would come into play. But to maintain the company’s net worth, let alone grow it, the sales team would have to be in a constant state of cold calling.

Today, the world lives and buys on the internet.

That means businesses that rely on outdated marketing methods like cold calls do so at their peril. Today, client relationships are created and nurtured through digital marketing teams that seamlessly integrate inbound marketing services like search engine optimization, web optimization, content marketing, and social media.

Competition is up in just about every type of business and industry. Even if a company truly wanted to rely on cold calls and other old-school outbound marketing methods, it couldn’t survive the rising internet tide.

But inbound marketing services are just sleeker, they are more cost-effective than old-school outbound models.

Some experts say that digital marketing cost 62 percent less than traditional marketing. It’s estimated that inbound marketing generates about 3 three times as many leads. And let’s not forget these are quality leads.

Potential customers can take advantage of inbound marketing services like relevant blogging, online service or sales chat, or just taking their time browsing a business’s website before filling out the “contact us” page. They can visit a company’s social media pages and learn what current customers think or take advantage of promotions.

Little wonder, then, that cold calls are on the way out. Of course, it goes without saying, perhaps, that a certain amount of outbound marketing -like online ads- remain viable. But even these digital techniques work best as supporting players to the star of the show: inbound marketing services.

Summing It Up

Inbound marketing services have revolutionized the way companies generate leads, close sales, and build customer relationships. Cold calls were once the only way to build a solid customer base. But today’s inbound digital marketing has opened up quality lead acquisition and customer relationship-building in ways that the old models simply cannot do.

No need to fear the new world. Your business will thrive there.

About Streng Agency

Streng Agency is an integrative branding agency that excels in all aspects of brand marketing, from digital media to website design to marketing events and more. Our full attention is on delivering the best results for your business. We can do this and more because we take our expertise and work with group companies to achieve groundbreaking results.